This interview is part of a series featuring the presenters participating in this year's Core77 Conference, "The Third Wave", a one-day event that will explore the future of the design industry and the role designers will play in it.

Climate change is the ultimate systemic problem and mitigating its consequences will require a multi-pronged approach involving governments, policymakers, corporations, designers, etc. Nobody knows this better than Susanne DesRoches, New York City's Deputy Director of Infrastructure and Energy. Trained as an industrial designer at Pratt, DesRoches believes design's iterative nature is a crucial key to the puzzle. As part of her work at the Mayor's Office of Sustainability and Resiliency, DesRoches is creating the tools that will empower architects, engineers, and other design professionals to create resilient structures for the future.

DesRoches will discuss her path from industrial design to sustainability during the fast-approaching 2019 Core77 Conference. We recently caught up with her to find out more about her background and design's role in tackling climate change.

Core77: You studied Industrial Design at Pratt as an undergraduate, worked in exhibition design, then joined the Port Authority in 2009. Now you lead New York City's infrastructure and energy policy. Can you tell me more about this trajectory and what led you to sustainability?

Susanne: After Pratt, I worked for about ten years at two different firms, Hixon Design Consultants and ESI Design. My focus was on architectural spaces and exhibition design. I began working on green building projects, in particular a Mercy Corps project in 2006, which involved a 5,000 square foot permanent exhibition space that was certified LEED Platinum.

Through the course of that work, I became interested in sustainability principles. However, I recognized that I was neither an engineer nor an architect, and that developing larger-scale strategic initiatives encouraging sustainability was where I wanted my career to go. At the time I was in my mid-thirties, and I went back to school full-time at Columbia, where I got a Master's of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy. I spent the bulk of my time there learning about the science behind climate change and what the impacts were, both globally and locally. I started to envision myself in a different type of career where I could apply industrial design processes to policymaking and organizational strategic initiatives.

And then you started at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey?

Yes, I joined the PA after graduation, becoming their first Sustainable Design Manager. I worked in the Engineering Department, which designs and constructs major infrastructure. To assist the engineers and architects at the PA, I developed two design guidelines: the Sustainable Infrastructure Guidelines and the Climate Resiliency Design Guidelines. My philosophy was—How do we incorporate sustainable and climate-resilient practices into every project that we're doing? What guidance does an engineer or an architect need to be able to do that?

I was at the Port Authority when Hurricane Sandy struck, so I quickly shifted from focusing primarily on sustainability to focusing on climate resiliency. It was a crash course in disaster recovery. In the two years after Sandy, as the Chief of Resilience and Sustainability, I led the Engineering Department's post-Sandy recovery and resiliency projects.

Currently, at the New York City Mayor's Offices of Sustainability and Resiliency, I lead a team of policy advisors focused on NYC's energy policy and infrastructure resiliency.

It's been almost seven years since Hurricane Sandy. How has the conversation around resiliency changed since the initial post-hurricane plan was laid out by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in June 2013?

Since the City's initial post-hurricane plan (called A Stronger More Resilient New York) was published in 2013, we have broadened the city's approach from a strong focus on extreme weather events to one that encompasses all of the impacts of climate change, including sea-level rise, storm surge, rising temperatures, and increased precipitation. These climate hazards all have risks and there's no single solution or approach. We are always looking for strategies that both protect against climate impacts and have other co-benefits for city residents. For instance, improving social cohesion is a critical strategy because we know the more closely-knit a community is, the better its members will do in the face of a disaster.

What role does design play in New York City's environmental reform plans?

Design plays a large role. We need innovation and creative thinking to solve these multi-layered issues, particularly as climate change evolves over time. So we aren't just solving for one set of issues, we're solving for a shifting climate. The key benefit that design offers as we move forward with our sustainability and resiliency plans is that by their very nature, they're iterative. They allow for incremental ideas, and they allow us to evaluate how well strategies are working. That inherent iterative design process is very beneficial to climate change planning.

Resiliency encompasses multiple strategies, from large-scale coastal projects to installing more curbside rain gardens at the neighborhood level. What are the most promising of those strategies?

There's no silver bullet for any one risk. What we really need to incorporate is more holistic thinking across different risks. When we think about achieving resiliency over time, the best strategies have an adaptive capacity. They need to work today, and they need to be able to shift and evolve in the future in order to function in the climate that we find ourselves in in 2050, in 2080, and beyond.

At the Mayor's Offices, one key step we have taken toward that goal is the publication of the City's Climate Resiliency Design Guidelines. The Guidelines take an approach that is quite innovative and reflects new thinking for design and engineering. They show teams how to not only use historical weather data, but to incorporate climate change projections, so we ensure infrastructure and buildings can withstand the future environment.

Tell me a bit about the process of putting those guidelines together.

Creating the Guidelines was a multi-agency process. We used the best climate change science we have today to develop a rubric for new projects. The Guidelines prompt project teams to answer: What is the useful life of a new capital project? How is the climate changing over that period of time? Ultimately, projects should be built using the climate projections at the end of the facility's life.

We had a lot of input from NYC agencies, including the Department of Design and Construction, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Transportation, and other capital agencies that build the facilities New Yorkers rely on. This was to ensure that the Guidelines could function as an instructional document for the engineering, architecture, and planning communities—all of the design industry. We wanted the Guidelines to be a how-to manual, not an aspirational document.

Could you give us a brief example of how a designer would use the guidelines?

If you were building a substation in the floodplain, the Guidelines would tell you the project's floodplain elevation. This is the height off the ground that floodwater from an anticipated storm would reach today. A substation typically lasts for 50 years, therefore the sea level rise projection you should use is for the 2070s timeframe. Following the Guidelines, the project would now be protected to a sea-level rise height adjusted to the 2070s.

It's very practical. The Guidelines also provide information on how to incorporate heat in the form of wet-bulb days and dry-bulb days, and how many of those days we expect per year. This information is critical for HVAC design, as well as building facades and windows. The Guidelines provide those raw numbers for designers to use in engineering and architectural codes and standards.

They actively impact the physical outcomes of design because if you design something to be heated and cooled using today's temperature thresholds, you'll end up with one particular design, but when you use the forward-looking climate projections, that design will change to accommodate future conditions.

Are we any closer to a LEED equivalent for resiliency?

I would say that the industry is in the early stages of learning how to augment historical climate data with future-looking data. Some systems, such as the EnVision system, include climate adaptation. However, currently, it's a pretty light touch. The focus of these systems is still primarily sustainability principles. As changes to the climate become more and more a part of our everyday lives, both locally and globally, we're going to start to see other systems emerge that adopt climate projections as a new design normal.

Beyond climate change, NYC also suffers from issues of climate justice. Rising temperatures disproportionately impact vulnerable neighborhoods, for example. What are some of the ways that cities can tackle these issues through design?

As you mentioned, extreme heat kills more New Yorkers than any other weather event. This is something that our office takes very seriously, and we're acting on that now. We have issued our Cool Neighborhoods program which has an approximately $106 million budget. This plan focuses on neighborhoods where we know residents are more vulnerable to heat. It includes targeted planting more street trees, painting roofs white, and raising awareness about the availability of cooling centers.

There are all kinds of benefits to this program. Not only can something simple like implementing reflective roofs save lives by keeping buildings cooler, it can also reduce energy use and lower electricity bills. As we think about ways to get to carbon neutrality—which the city has committed to by 2050, in accordance with the Paris Agreement—we want to look for strategies that both reduce carbon emissions as well as make our climate more livable.

(Revels are not allowed on sidewalks)

New York City's latest entry in the quest to fulfill it's imposing transportation needs is the moped-sharing, start-up called, Revel. 1000 of their blue and black moped's appeared in Queens and Brooklyn earlier this year and unsurprisingly, they have already become a point of contention among residents. Though not nearly as dangerous as cars, many have expressed concern when it comes to the danger they may pose to rider and pedestrian alike (the Department of Transportation has yet to notice any significant safety issues with the mopeds). While safety surely will continue to be subject of debate, the electric-powered alternative has provided a unique experience for those who struggle to efficiently navigate the interspaces of the city's two largest boroughs.

Regarding transportation in the US, we have to take what we can when it comes to electric alternatives. Beyond the fact that the US just loves it's cars, the current federal administration has made it a mission to dismantle emissions regulations, despite the global ecological crisis we're fueling by doing so. Perhaps offering the option of an electric alternative will inspire city-goers to more frequently opt for an electric moped, over a ride-share service that necessitates fossil-fuel. We must move towards new energy alternatives, but it is equally important that designers scrutinize new technologies and the material that goes into them.

In the initial 68 mopeds that Revel put on the street for a trial run, they used a model called, MUVI, which is manufactured by the Spanish company Torrot. However the current batch of mopeds are manufactured by the Chinese company NIU, known specifically for its electric 2-wheeled vehicles. NIU has been designing and manufacturing mopeds since 2014, but the company only this year received approval from the Department of Transportation to start selling their vehicles in the US.

Niu-sharing electric moped, via niu.com

Their N-model that Revel has deployed are specifically designed to be free-floating, so that they can be easily utilized and monitored by moped-sharing companies. Which essentially means that the mopeds are outfitted with tech that enables remote access via app and immediate data upload to NIU's cloud. Which in turn allows for diagnostic and telematic data to be observed in real time. For better or for worse, a user's time on Revel's moped is monitored extensively. As stated on NIU's website the mopeds have "32 on-board sensors" that "check every system 200 times per minute."

Revel app

Within each moped there are two 60V 29Ah batteries that last 600 recharge cycles. The batteries are in a compartment located at the base of the moped, beneath where the drivers feet rest. With a total 3.48KW output to power the moped, they can go upwards of 40mph but for Revel users, the speed is capped at 30mph. Users can check the battery level of a moped near them via the app. If mid-ride the charge dips to zero percent, then the speed of vehicle will top out at 15mph and you'll be advised to find a place to park. On a full charge the batteries can take you as far as 60 miles.

These lithium-ion batteries are manufactured by Panasonic, which has made a name for itself in the production of lithium-ion batteries by supplying notable e-vehicle companies like Tesla. Lithium-ion batteries are pretty much standard fare when it comes to rechargeable batteries, and will likely dominate the rechargeable battery market in years to come. As CITYLAB reports, Paul Suhey, co-founder of Revel, said of the batteries that "Right now, the range is 50 miles, but two years ago, it was 20 miles," and that "The business model running an electric moped company is now viable, compared to a couple of years ago. "

Lithium-Ion Battery Pack, via niu.com

The ever more efficient lithium-ion batteries contain a wide array of raw materials and how these materials are sourced, is an area of growing interest and concern. While many US companies have expressed intent to source only sustainable operations within the US, most of the elements can only be found outside of the country. Which in some cases has proven to be ethically dubious when sourcing materials like cobalt and graphite (material content varies by battery).

The design of these electric mopeds, and all that they contain, is far from perfect. Yet, as a current resident of Brooklyn, I'd be glad to see the city work to allocate more services for bikes and electric vehicles like Revel's mopeds. Anything that might discourage people from relying so heavily on high emission vehicles in these dense urban spaces.

Revels, at the moment, are only available in New York City and Washington DC. Similar moped-sharing services can be found in other cities, such as Scoot in San Francisco and Scoobi in Pittsburgh. Based upon the enthusiasm with which they've been met here in Brooklyn, it won't be surprising if the trend continues to spread to other cities. If nothing else, we can hope it signals a growing trend towards zero-emission vehicles and a phasing out of emission-heavy systems in urban spaces.

Do you want to work for the world’s leader in play design and equipment manufacturing? Are you a person with a passion for designing a unique play experience for all ages? Here in our Lewisburg PA location, we're not just in the business of making playground equipment. We're in the kid-empowering, confidence-building, health-promoting, community-strengthening business—the business of saving play. We believe The World Needs Play. If this is you or someone you know, let’s talk

Three years ago, Ella Hall was on the phone with yet another interior designer griping about a failed custom upholstery project. In her then-role in client services at Homepolish, a design company connecting end clients to interior designers (which, as of this month, has shuttered operations), her job was to act as the middle-person – a position that primarily involved troubleshooting projects before crisis struck.

This call, like so many others she regularly fielded, was due to a miscommunication of material specs from client to designer to textiles fabricator. Lead times would in turn be extended, build-outs incomplete, photography dates pushed, clients unhappy. She was fed up.

Hall finally started offering to fulfill custom upholstery orders herself. She had a sewing machine, and it made her day job incredibly more efficient to absorb the workload of super simple (though precise) projects like custom-sized pillows or bench cushions. The designers she worked with loved the idea, so she continued offering it, essentially keeping the operational step "in-house" by just doing the work herself. The burden of the complaint phone calls slowly lifted as she found more and more designers lining up for her services, which all around met their needs, made them look better in the client's eyes, and expedited their projects.

Custom pillows developed by Stitchroom. Photography by Claire Esparros.

Eventually, she was sewing nights and weekends to keep up with the orders – and an epiphany struck. "I saw the complicated process of getting custom products made, and an opportunity to solve a widespread problem," Hall said. The need for easy, transparent upholstery customization was overwhelming, and she had the skills and the chutzpah to officially do something about it. "I just had to take action," she recalls.

Ella Hall

Hall was living in the East Village with her now-husband and another roommate at the time. The industrial-grade sewing machine she'd acquired, along with the piles of pillows and lanky rolls of fabric, was consuming her apartment. She soon moved to Brooklyn, where she found a place with a nook that accommodated her machinery and fabrication materials, and built Stitchroom out of her apartment. Not too long after, she moved operations to the company's first studio and office space in an industrial building in Greenpoint. Stitchroom has since expanded to take over two spaces on one floor, and next week is moving to an even bigger space in the same building in order to rejoin operations under one studio roof.

Stitchroom team on the job

Custom cushions and upholstery for a sofa project, by Stitchroom. Photography by Claire Esparros.

One of the biggest innovations Hall implemented was a technology-driven system of transparency. What Stitchroom digitized "would allow clients the ability to value engineer their custom projects" through formulated systems of information captures (such as custom dimensions requests) and live price updates. "Transparency in communication, pricing, and lead times are very important for me," said Hall, and she brought that priority to life in the Stitchroom platform. Through it, clients create an account online, upload their product specs, and can live track their project every step of the way through order draft to fabrication progress through payment and shipping.

What essentially began as a pillows side-gig has now also grown to include the rest of the upholstery industry: Hall recognizes that there are existing textile fabricators who have been around for a while and may have outdated client services models. Though her whole mission is to update the process of customization so it's entirely unintimidating, she by no means wants to displace these older-school businesses.

In addition to its staff of sewers, Stitchroom has recently rolled out a contracting system where the company acts as the relationship manager, bringing new work from new client bases to existing upholstery studios. Through this model of relationship management, which is designed after her position at Homepolish, Stitchroom is applying the conveniences of communication-through-technology to the traditional fabrication studio model, so that project statuses are available to maker, intermediary, client, and end user in one fell swoop.

Hall shared that Stitchroom's services have been particularly useful for millworkers and furniture makers who are incorporating textiles into their designs. She offered up a story of a millworker-architect team, who before now hadn't even considered conceptualizing upholstered surfaces into their build-out designs because sourcing reliable vendors had been a pain point in the past. "Once you realize that you have full control over the process of creating custom upholstery, it changes everything," Hall says of the design process. Now, the boundaries of how the millworker and architect can together envision a space – and, in turn, present it within the scope of a project – are incredibly expanded. For a recent project, they pitched banquette seating to a client, and were able to offer the upholstery element as a joint line item versus a separate vendor cost. They spec'd the cushions through Stitchroom, received them in-shop, and joined them to the seating, conveniently delivering a finished product custom built to the client's space.

Custom banquette bench and backing cushions for a commercial project, by Stitchroom

Stitchroom is still a relatively new company, so its services have their limitations. For example, the ability to work on larger-scale upholstery projects, such as unconventional sofa or bigger lounge chair designs, is sometimes dependent on geographic location and accessibility to the New York studio.

Bluestone Lane cafe - Photo credit Nick Glimenakis

The company has come a long way, though, since 2016, with Hall's fabrication equipment displacing her roommates from their shared living area. As Stitchroom continues to grow, and continues to respond to designers' needs, it's moving the industry further from avoidable miscommunication, unnecessarily extended lead times, and unhappy clients. Stitch-by-stitch, it's forging ground for an altogether seamless upholstery process.

While conducting unrelated research for her dissertation, architectural historian and design writer Esther Choi stumbled across an elaborate, illustrated menu developed by Lászlo Moholy-Nagy for a dinner honoring Walter Gropius in 1937. The serendipitous find inspired Choi to start creating her own recipes inspired by artists and designers. Those dishes set off a series of dinner parties at Choi's home, during which she surprised guests with plates like "Florence Knoll Rolls", "Frei Otto Frittata", "Superstewdio", and "Rem Brûlée". The playful recipes she developed over the years have been gathered in a gorgeous cookbook titled Le Corbuffet, published October 1st by Prestel.

"I hosted the first in a series of 'Le Corbuffets' in my Brooklyn apartment, a project which carried on until 2017. Offering meals to an assortment of guests, these social gatherings revolved around the consumption of absurd, pun-inspired dishes that referred to canonical artists and designers," Choi explains on her website. "As a commentary on the status of art, food, and design as commodities to be 'gobbled up' by the market, the project deliberately twisted idioms to explore the notion of 'aesthetic consumption' through taste and perception."

Some of the recipes are inspired by biographical details or aim to translate the qualities of an artist or designer's work through the medium of food. In developing the "Richard Serradura", for example, Choi wanted to riff on artist Richard Serra's use of industrial materials and manufacturing processes by creating a dish made only of mass-produced ingredients. The Flan Flavin, on the other hand, nods to the artist Dan Flavin's fluorescent light works with a lime-colored custard.

The recipes are paired with stylized, deconstructed images that don't necessarily reflect how your finished dish will turn. If they seem overwrought, don't be dismayed. The recipes themselves are surprisingly traditional and written to be both accessible and delicious, using easy-to-find and economical ingredients. In fact, if the pun-inspired names didn't already tip you off, the book repeatedly pokes fun at the exclusivity of highbrow culture.

"The Gropius menu represented a culinary experience for the cultural elite that mirrored the precious inaccessibility of the cultural commodities that have come to characterize the art/design canon," Choi elaborated in a recent interview. "The book's recipes attempt to unpack this relationship by privileging resourcefulness over resources and trying to encourage creative production using a limited economy of means."

This image pairs with Choi's recipe for Fischli and Weisscream and loosely evokes the duo's famous film, The Way Things Go.

Ultimately, the cookbook aims to suggest "there is something crucial in the idea that anyone can make anything—especially experiences meant for sharing—using ordinary things."

Design is what drives our company forward so we’re looking for the best of the best. You need to be confident in your skills about working in a small team and being in the spotlight. As our lead digital product designer you’ll go beyond eye candy visuals and pretty interfaces; you’ll provide meaning to the way our customers interact with our products. You’ll work closely with a cross-functional team to ideate, prototype, develop, test, and launch new software and hardware products. Additionally, you’ll produce assets that will be utilized for business decks and marketing collateral, print and digital.

Algae is hot right now, and not just because global warming is exacerbating massive algae blooms (you'll understand later). If you've been paying attention to recent design trends, you've likely become aware of the growingpopularityofalgae in design. This year, the Nature Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York and the Cube Design Museum in Kerkade, Holland, as well as Paola Antonelli's Broken Nature exhibition at the Design Triennale Milano, have exhibited a number of projects demonstrating algae-based explorations in design.

This shift towards algal material in product and fashion design, could not come too soon. As the design industry is sluggishly beginning to acknowledge the ecological fallout of its love affair with fossil fuel-based plastics and other synthetics that are accelerating climate change. The potential of a carbon-negative algal material, offers a compelling glimpse at new production techniques for the future (that we needed yesterday). Yet how does a designer, rarely provided with any education in phycology nor even biology, begin to approach algae? In order for designers to effectively begin to explore algal material, more designers will need to be equipped with a basic level of understanding when it comes to the oxygen-emitting lifeforms.

For algae are a phenomenally vast and complex collection of organisms. It is estimated that there are between 30,000 and 1 million different species of algae. Of the kingdom Protista, algae have traits similar to animals, plants, and fungi, but they don't really fit into any of those categories neatly (which makes trying to sort them very tricky). Algae are among Earth's earliest lifeforms, they can be as small as a microscopic, single-celled organism (microalgae) or as big as a 200ft-long kelp (macroalgae). They can be found almost everywhere on the planet, in snow, soil, hot-springs, ponds, icebergs, lakes, rivers, oceans, in the space between bits of sand, on the shells of turtles, in the fur of sloths, on plants, on rocks, on coral, even inside of other organisms.

"Watermelon snow" reveals a variation of green algae that thrives in freezing temperatures.

They are everywhere, and ecologically-speaking, algae are heavy-hitters. Primarily aquatic, they are the base food for nearly all marine life on Earth. They are also responsible for this nice oxygen-rich atmosphere we are quickly filling with carbon. The formation of the Earths atmosphere as we know it, is in large part due to the photosynthetic efforts of algae, and even today it is thought that 50 to 85 percent of global oxygen available to land animals (us), is produced by algae.

Algae Lab Luma (via New Material Award)

Many refer to algae as aquatic plants, as they are photosynthetic like plants, but they differ in that they have variations in the color of their chloroplasts (unlike the typically green pigment of plants). As they are photosynthetic, they possess that now invaluable skill of sucking up carbon. This fact, paired with their prodigious ability to grow and thrive, have made them an appealing organism for designers to work with. The obvious benefits of algal material begs the question, how is there not a massive industry for this already?

Though there is a several billion dollar market for algae, it is almost entirely dominated by the food industry. Algae has many applications in preparing foods, and many by-products are used in the manufacturing of a litany of household goods. Amid the many variants, red algae is the most popular commercial food alga. You may know it as the Japanese nori (nori alone is comprised of 60-70 different species of red algae) or Dulse, in North Atlantic regions like the US and Canada. For designers these red algae offer opportunity, "Any species with human food applications is the easiest to scale since there is a high-value output that can drive the production." says Charlotte McCurdy, who's carbon-negative raincoat derived from several genera of the red algae is now on display at the Cooper Hewitt Museum.

Charlotte McCurdy's Raincoat, as featured in the Nature exhibition at Cooper Hewitt.

Close-up of McCurdy's Algae-based material.

Other algae that already have established markets include, the brown algae, Laminaria, which is eaten in soups in Japan, Korea, and China. As well as the green algae Monostroma and Ulva (Sea Lettuce). One species of green alga known as Chlorella, is so rich in protein that it has been considered a food source for extended space travel. While there are already many algae available on the market, and trends indicate that different alga will become increasingly accessible.

Agar, a by-product of red algae, is used for this award winning Agar Material by Kosuke Araki, Noriaki Maetani, Akira Muraoka photo by Kosuke Araki

Yet the means by which algae are produced and harvested must be carefully scrutinized. For some algae can actually be harmful if they grow excessively. Like cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which, though it is responsible for producing most of the oxygen in the atmosphere it can also be extremely harmful when it proliferates. As if to emphasize the fact that algae is complicated, cyanobacteria can produce toxins and actually restrict oxygen levels in marine environments. These harmful algae blooms can release toxins into the water and air. The blooms are caused and exacerbated by human activity in marine environments, climate change, and large scale changes to ocean conditions. Which is to say, even though algae has massive potential, its probably best not to dump mass amounts of iron in marine environments with the hope that algae will solve all our problems.

To find new ways to cultivate algae, many designers have begun to explore the use of bioreactors to grow their own, while others like the think-tank Atelier Luma in Arles, France have even explored local species to understand how this ubiquitous organism might be sourced with minimal impact. Marine permaculture also offers an exciting alternative for ecological cultivation. "Wild macroalgae forests only cover a small fraction of the fertile ocean. We have an opportunity to expand supply of macroalgae without needing to do the kind of uncontrolled 'iron-dumping' that the more conventional geoengineering approach advocates." says McCurdy, "Climate change means that things will change; they have to change. We need more people involved in the decisions that will determine that change."

We got to ride and tour Lexus' new LY 650 yacht on its maiden voyage in Florida. Here are images and our impressions. We've also got the full story behind how and why this yacht was created.

Core77 and a small group of international journalists was recently invited by Lexus to the unveiling of their new yacht, the LY 650. Here we'll show you our tour of it, both inside and out.

Held in Boca Raton, Florida, the event included a ride-along on the LY 650's maiden voyage.

I know, it's tricky to satisfyingly photograph something that's in the water and behind a dock. But while we've got more revealing press shots ahead, I did want you to see what it looks like from the dockside vantage point that most people would see it from.

The main level is topped by a flybridge. The captain can pilot the yacht from either level. The staterooms are below, as you'll see in a moment.

Here I'm trying to shoot from an angle that reveals the fender-like flares at the rear of the yacht's form.

That rear "fender flare" from another angle.

The Lexus logo, of course. Lots of double-takes from passersby.

The prow of the boat is a chromed element that runs along the longitudinal axis of the craft. From what I understand of the yacht design world, this is highly unusual.

The chromed prow element houses the anchor.

Also unusual, where yacht design is concerned, is the dark exterior color and this bronze-ish horizontal form stretching backwards from the prow.

Buckle up, folks, strange story ahead.

I'm at the Palm Beach International Raceway, whipping around the track in this thing:

That's Lexus' LC 500, a performance coupe with a 5-liter V8 engine that cranks out 471 horsepower and 398 pound-feet of torque. I can get it up to about 115 miles per hour before I have to slow down to avoid colliding with the car in front of me. This low-slung, street-legal racecar handles like a dream, and the throaty growl of the engine is absolutely thrilling.

Me and 19 other journalists are taking turns running laps at this Lexus-hosted event. After driving on the main track, we're divided into smaller groups to drive on the smaller courses (slalom, emergency braking, autocross). Waiting for us at these auxiliary tracks are yet more LC 500s, lined up in a row. This car costs almost $100,000 and it's Lexus' pride and joy.

However, one of the journalists I'm with, a guy named Simon, spots a car that is not the LC 500, sitting off to the side. It has four doors.

Simon points to it. "Can I drive that one?" he asks a Lexus rep.

"No problem," the rep says, motioning for an associate to bring the car over.

After whipping the LC 500 around the autocross track, I become curious: Why did Simon choose the four-door family sedan, rather than the supercar-like LC?

Then I remembered what the French stunt driver had told me.

The French Stunt Driver

As part of the event, Lexus had shuttled us to Miami's Design District the day before. We journalists had been divided into trios, with each group placed in a chauffeur-driven Lexus LX. On the way back, I sat in the front so I could try the front seats' built-in massage function. (I have a bad back, and this thing was incredible.)

It was a long drive, and I struck up a conversation with the driver. Was he a full-time chauffeur, how did he get into this line of work?

"Actually, I was a racecar driver," he said. "I raced Formula cars in France, then came to America to do stunt driving for Hollywood, and got a spot racing for NASCAR.

"I hated NASCAR," he said. "The cars are too heavy, and driving in a circle was very weird for me."

I had mistakenly thought he was a Lexus employee but Julian, who had a French accent, revealed that he now earns his living as a race instructor and as a driver-for-hire for events like this. (The stunt work dried up, he said, with demand being reduced by both CG and nepotism in the small stunt driver community.)

We talked cars for much of the ride, and agreed that the best car chase scenes in any movie were in Ronin, with that Audi S8 and 5-class BMW. Those are bad-ass scenes because they're not using sports cars, but regular four-door sedans being driven with skill, and all without Fast-and-Furious-style CG.

Best movie car chase scenes: "Ronin," 1998

Since Julian had driven practically every type of car on Earth, I had to know: What was his personal car? What does an experienced professional driver choose to drive every day?

"I have a 2008 BMW M5," he said with pride. "I bought it used. It took me a long time to find, but it was exactly what I wanted. This kind of car, they do not make anymore."

I posed him a philosophical question: If he totaled the M5 and could not find another, what would he choose?

"Actually, I've thought about that," he said. "I would probably get a GS-F. But they will stop making it this year. They are not taking any more orders, and I heard they have canceled the car. That is a shame."

"What's a GS-F?" I asked.

"Lexus makes it," he replied.

Back to the Track

The car that Simon had chosen was a GS-F. Next to the exotic-looking LC 500, it appears to be an unassuming, somewhat boxy family sedan. Simon climbed out of it after his run with a smile on his face, and when the opportunity came to change cars, I hopped into it.

The GS-F is obviously bigger than the LC 500, and the driving position is a bit higher. I nosed it up to the starting line of the autocross track, not knowing what to expect. When I got the green light, I hit the accelerator.

Pardon my French, but I can only describe the GS-F driving experience as HOLY MOTHERF*CKING SH*T.

The LC 500, you expect that thing to be fast, because that's what fast cars look like. But the GS-F sedan looks like a maybe-faster-than-average four-door--so it was a fast as f*ck surprise. While it feels heavier than the LC 500, the engine (also a 5-liter V8) is so powerful that you only become aware of the extra weight in the corners.

With no other cars for me to collide with on the autocross track, I pushed the GS-F harder and harder. Using the braking and apexing techniques the instructors had taught us, I took corners at approximately twice the speed I'd be comfortable doing in a regular car. The brakes were powerful, the acceleration was explosive and the handling was unflappable.

I spent the next two laps living out every bank-robber-getaway-driver fantasy I've had since I was 16. I threw the car into corners like I was being chased by a team of police cruisers. By the end I was practically trying to send it off of the road, but it was like the traction had been taken over by an AI that refused to let me lose control, while still delivering how-is-this-possible levels of speed.

After the test drives were done, we were given the opportunity to take a "hot lap" in a GS-F driven by racing legend Scott Pruett. (Pruett, recently retired from a 50-year racing career, is now a Lexus brand ambassador.) Since the car is a four-door, he'd take three of us at a time.

We strapped our helmets back on and climbed in. Pruett, cool as a cucumber, then launched the GS-F down the track while calmly answering one of the journalist's many questions. He got the car up to 134 miles an hour--with all four of us weighing it down. I have never felt G-forces like I felt in the corners; I had trouble holding my helmeted head upright, and felt certain that my body was leaving a deep impression in the seats and door panel.

"Didj'have fun, guys?" Pruett, all smiles, asked as we completed the lap. "You wanna do it again?"

We of course said yes, and seconds later were rocketing down the track again. Under Pruett's impossibly-smooth steering and pedal control, it felt like we were in a four-door Ferrari.

After I wobbled away from the car and took my helmet off, I got it. Julian the driver, and the guys behind the car chase scenes in Ronin, preferred fast four-door cars that don't look flashy. Sleeper cars. I now understood the appeal completely.

In short, I was super-impressed with the about-to-be-canceled GS-F. But weirdly enough, the car's lack of popularity--or at least, a small group of vocal haters--was the whole reason Lexus was holding this event, which had nothing to do with the GS-F, or even cars, at all.

The Akio Era

Akio Toyoda is 63 years old but looks 43. And he doesn't look like the president of the largest auto manufacturer in the world; he bears an impish smile and looks like an uncle that's about to play a prank on you. I know these things because I met him.

He's the great-grandson of inventor Sakichi Toyoda, who in 1926 founded the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works and came to be known as the Father of Japan's Industrial Revolution.

Akio is the son of Shoichiro Toyoda, who as President of Toyota Motor Corporation from 1982 to 1992 oversaw the development of the Lexus brand.

However, despite this lineage there was no guarantee that Akio Toyoda would ascend to the presidency himself. As far back as 1950, the Toyota company broke with tradition and promoted non-family-members into the company presidency, three times in fact, from then until now. The last time a Toyoda family member had held the reins was in 1995. Also remember that Akio's got tons of relatives also descended from Sakichi Toyoda, and any of them might have earned the top job.

Further proof that Akio was no dynastic shoo-in: Consider that Germany's wealthiest family, the Quandts, own 46% of BMW, giving them outsized influence in all decisions. The Porsche family owns 53% of Volkswagen. The Toyoda family's shares of Toyota? Less than 1%.

It's also worth noting that Akio Toyoda is rather unconventional, maybe even rebellious. When a mentor warned him that even if he would be company president someday, Toyota's engineers would not take his input seriously, since he lacked racing experience, he began training as a race driver--even though he was in his 50s. Using a pseudonym so as not to draw attention, he subsequently competed, multiple times, in the grueling 24 Hours of Nürburgring at Germany's famously challenging and dangerous course (3 to 12 people die on the track each year). In 2009 he and his team finished a respectable 3rd out of eight in the "SP8" naturally-aspirated prototype category.

At the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show, Akio arrived "in the first car he ever owned, a meticulously preserved, white 1970 Corolla 1600 GT," Automotive Newsreported. "Afterward, he delighted the masses by doing doughnuts in the lot out back."

This past May, Akio delivered the commencement speech to this year's graduating class at his Alma Mater, Babson College in Massachusetts. "How wild is tonight's party going to get?" he asked the grads from the podium. "And more importantly, can I come?

"I can't stay out too late," he added. "Because tomorrow is the finale of 'Game of Thrones.'"

When I met Akio Toyoda in Florida, he cheerfully began handing out these self-designed stickers to everyone nearby:

Yes, the man is unusual.

Akio Toyoda got his MBA from Babson in his mid-20s, in 1982, and started working for Toyota in '84. He worked his way up through the company, being rotated through multiple positions as is the Japanese custom; automotive operations, production, marketing, product development, quality control, purchasing, management. And finally, after 25 years, in 2009 he earned the presidency.

A Busy Start

Akio Toyoda inherited a great company in the middle of a shitstorm.

The financial crisis was in full swing, and just months earlier Toyota reported that they'd experienced their first fiscal year operating at a loss. Reuterscalled it "the worst downturn in its history." Seemingly as a warning, competitors GM and Chrysler, facing similar difficulties, went over the cliff of bankruptcy.

In 2010 it got worse, with an "unintended acceleration" problem--which reportedly dated back to 2007--emerging in Toyota's vehicles. The company's legendary quality control had failed, and Akio was called to testify before the U.S. Congress. While he was not in charge of Toyota when the problem was created, he was damn sure responsible for cleaning it up. "I take full responsibility for that," he testified. "We never run away from our problems or pretend we don't notice them." He enacted a policy whereby Toyota management team members were compelled to drive the very models they had developed and, as a trained test driver himself, took the unusual step of driving the problematic models both before and after the fixes had been enacted.

In 2011 it got worse yet again, as Japan was rocked by an earthquake, a tsunami and the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, shattering Toyota's supply chain. Suddenly their vaunted "just in time" production system appeared vulnerable.

But there was one bright spot, or what was supposed to be a bright spot, in 2011. Lexus had completed their re-design of the fourth-generation GS, their mid-luxury class performance sedan, one of the first new models whose design Akio had signed off on since becoming company president. Lexus unveiled it at Pebble Beach.

The response was…not good.

The Worst Insult of All

Shigeki Tomoyama, Toyota's Executive Vice President, smiles patiently as we journalists shuffle into an unusual chamber. A flatscreen TV has been set up on a countertop for his presentation. As Toyota and Lexus images begin to flash across the screen, Tomoyama's face turns serious.

"The story goes back to 2011," he begins. "When we launched the Lexus GS at Pebble Beach that year, our president, Mr. Toyoda, faced the criticism that 'Lexus was boring.'"

I tend to think of CEOs and company presidents as relatively invulnerable people, but the comment hit Toyoda hard. ("It was such a bitter experience," he'd later tell us.) And coming off of three crises in a row, none of which were of his own making, Toyoda resolved to come up with something radical and original to turn the company's fortunes around.

Thus, following Pebble Beach and the criticism, Toyoda "decided to become the Chief Brand Officer of Lexus," Tomoyama continues, "to lead a measured design and product reform. As CBO, he initiated the Lexus brand transformation towards becoming a luxury lifestyle brand."

Under Akio's direction, Lexus designers and consultants were tasked with creating things that went beyond cars. This yielded an F Sport luxury road bicycle made out of the same carbon fiber reinforced plastic as their LFA supercar;

It also yielded Intersect by Lexus, a combination café, restaurant, retail space, event space and cocktail bar in New York City;

And after Akio paid a visit to Toyota's Marine division in Japan, which produces power boats for fishing and cruising, he had an idea: A Lexus Sport Yacht Concept.

"Three years ago," Tomoyama continues, "we launched the first Lexus Sport Yacht Concept here in Miami. We received a lot of positive feedback, and comments such as 'The design is fantastic,' 'When will it be for sale?' and 'How much?'" But unfortunately, at that time I had to answer 'It's just a concept, and we are not planning to sell it.

"Today," Tomoyama says, "we are very proud to unveil the production model of the Lexus 650."

So…here's where I should point out that the "unusual chamber" I'd mentioned earlier is not part of a building, but floating on a waterway off of Boca Raton. We're standing in the main cabin of the LY 650, Lexus' $4-million, 65-foot yacht.

Before stepping inside, we had to place little booties over our shoes to avoid marring any surfaces:

The protective footwear was handed out because this is, as Tomoyama mentioned, a production model. This is the first one off of the line and it's already been sold. The anonymous buyer isn't going to want our footprints all over it. But, for the next two hours, we're allowed to check it all out as we cruise past the coast.

The surfaces, the materials, and the fit-and-finish are what you'd expect from Lexus. There's plenty of carbon fiber, expensive wood, shiny metal fixtures, buttery-soft materials.

From the main cabin you can descend a staircase. Halfway down is a landing occupied by a small galley kitchen.

At the bottom of the stairs you reach the lower level, which features three state rooms (and three bathrooms all featuring both a toilet and a shower). The master state room has a sofa and a walk-in closet, for chrissakes.

In addition to the Lexus-level fit-and-finish, what's most remarkable is that the rooms do not feel small nor cramped, like you'd expect in the hull of a boat; Italian yacht designer Lenard, whom Lexus collaborated with, struck upon the right combination of contrasting tones to give the cabins a feeling of spaciousness in a small footprint. I'd imagine Lexus' homegrown designers had plenty of input too, as Japan is another place where you've got to make limited space feel livable.

(Click here for the full slideshow of our LY 650 interior/exterior tour and our impressions.)

A Surprise Visit

We journalists not supposed to meet Akio Toyoda on this trip; he wasn't scheduled to be there. But after the inaugural cruise, back on land we were asked to wait in a receiving area. Akio, it turns out, had just flown in to see the LY 650.

Incredibly, since its construction had only just been completed, we'd gotten to take a ride on it before he had. "To tell you the truth, I haven't been on the yacht yet," Akio revealed. "That means that you are way ahead of me when it comes to experiencing it."

What followed next was an informal Q&A session with Toyoda, a rare opportunity. Had I known, I would have prepared a better question than what I came up with. (I should also point out here that our questions and his answers were delivered through an interpreter--in the case of some of the international journalists, through two interpreters and three languages--so some of these responses may not be verbatim.)

My fellow journalists had tons of questions, the first one of course being "Why a yacht?"

Akio confirmed that his disappointment at the reception of the GS was, in fact, the inciting incident. "Originally when I became president, and when we launched the new GS, I was told that that vehicle was very, very boring. That critic said that he had never seen such a boring car! And that was the starting point for everything for Lexus that has happened since.

"At Lexus we want to create more than just luxury products; we want to create a luxury lifestyle. This yacht is part of that idea.

"Toyota itself is now trying to transition from an automotive company into a mobility company. And in order to enhance the value of our Lexus brand, we need to cover land, sea…and also air."

Does that mean a Lexus airplane is in the works?

"Please wait to see what we do when it comes to that area."

As for the question I came up with: I pointed out that we adult journalists all understood what Lexus was trying to do with the brand, and that we were of course familiar with Lexus because it's been around for years. But what if a child spotted a Lexus and, having no idea about brands, asked his parents what it was? How would Akio Toyoda like to hear them describe it?

He thought about it for a moment. Then said:

"First of all, I would like to ask the child how they feel about [the Lexus object in question], at first sight. What do they feel--a sense of security, a peacefulness? I think those are extremely important, essential aspects of the taste that Lexus provides.

"Also, when the child looks at this Lexus, whether it is a car, a yacht or something else, I would hope they feel some sense of yearning, so to speak. A feeling that he or she wants to own something like this in the future. I want to make sure that Lexus could provide such an emotional sensation, at first sight."

A journalist threw him a softball: What was he most proud of about Lexus designs?

"The gracefulness," he said. "I mean there are numerous premium brands and makers of luxury, high-end, high-quality, high-performing cars. But I want to make sure that among those, Lexus offers gracefulness, for people driving them or looking at them. That's what I insist on when it comes to Lexus. And I'm not saying that we have fully accomplished that objective, at this point.

"In order for us to accomplish that objective, the most important aspect is to develop and nurture those people who we will be building Lexus going forward. For us to be able to do that, it's very important that we receive influence and feedback from people like you."

Another journalist chimed in with a question about whether Akio himself would be cruising around in a Lexus yacht. His answer revealed another, previously unmentioned motivation to build waterborne pleasure craft.

"Actually, I do have a sailing license," Akio replied. "As for why I obtained it: I have been exposed to many different areas of the outside world, and [as President of Toyota] there is no purely private space for me. And I thought being on a yacht would be a purely private space. That's why I was attracted specifically to yachts.

"Right now, however, I do not have the ability to sail and maneuver a yacht fully on my own. So even if I'm on a yacht, I still won't have a purely private space, yet.

"Someday in the future I want to gain that ability, so that I can maneuver the yacht and sail myself around. As I said, I have not been on the yacht yet, but I think what I would enjoy most, is to be on that area in the very front of the boat, where I can just lie down and enjoy myself."

The Senior Industrial Designer will be responsible for engineering the range of APPARATUS’ products – including lighting, furniture, objects, fixtures and special projects. This individual must have master-level skills in SolidWorks, and an extensive (10+ years) background including specific experience in lighting design. Candidate must enjoy working in a collaborative

Fabricator: "I can't read this drawing--does that say 1:4 or 1:8? Ah, it's probably 1:8."

"I call my aesthetic '1980s Children's Ferrari.'"

"Because it's placed against the wall, it limits legroom so that the only way you can sit at it is with the lower corner poking you in the stomach. Then I added an additional intrusive corner just above that, to remove any semblance of usable space."

"The goal is to see if you can have sex on this thing so vigorously that it flips all the way over."

"I've only broken a few glasses when I reflexively closed the drawer, so overall I'm happy with the design."

"I wanted to design something that uses electricity and LEDs, but doesn't provide any functional illumination."

"My goals were to reduce the four points of stability of a conventional stepladder, reduce the usable surface of the topmost step, and add an uncapped, upwards-pointing protrusion."

"This is part of my 'Jabba the Hutt's Summer Home' collection."

"I can't decide if I look sillier folding and unfolding the things, or sitting in them."

"It's convenient because it hangs from a single nail. Although I did learn that if you're going to place a vase or a fishbowl on this, make sure it's centered on the shelf!"

BOTE® is seeking a Graphic Designer. The person is this role will work on a diverse range of projects in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. Candidate must be an action-oriented individual who learns quickly, works independently, and creates solutions to

Though I am a furniture maker, many of my design cues come from architecture. Thousands of years before furniture became commonplace amongst all corners of society, there were people thinking deeply about the design of buildings, their proportions, facades, mouldings, pediments, columns – and how all these details were processed by a viewer.

As a result, many of the ideas and terms in furniture design come from the field of architecture. So I'm amazed when a fellow woodworker has little interest in studying classical, vernacular, sacred or modern architecture. It's like a chef who has no interest in farming.

Now, before you rush out to enroll in architecture school, let me tell you how to get a crash course in it and get a taste for how it can improve your work at the drafting board and the bench. It's as easy as a walk around the block.

While built in the 1890s, this Charleston, S.C., home incorporates architectural elements from previous periods – it was built using bits and pieces after an earthquake. After looking at 100 of these houses, these details become evident.

Charleston, S.C., 1991

When I graduated from college I worked as a newspaper reporter in South Carolina, and one week my editors sent me to Charleston, S.C., to report on how the clean-up efforts from Hurricane Hugo were progressing.

I'd never been to Charleston, and my first appointment was with the mayor at his office downtown.

I almost didn't make it to the interview. It wasn't because of traffic or negligence. I got sidetracked by the buildings. Charleston is one of the most architecturally rich colonial cities in North America. And unlike some other similar cities (such as Colonial Williamsburg), Charleston is a living, breathing city.

After my newspaper work that day was done, I left the city reluctantly. Being surrounded by that much historic architecture made my eyes swim and my head feel drunk. I called my father in Arkansas that night and talked him into coming for a visit to Charleston with me.

He did. And he moved there as soon as he could afford it.

During my nearly 30-year love affair with the city, I spent most of my days there just walking the city streets and alleys. My dad and I pledged to walk every single street of the town, even those up in the dangerous areas above the city's connector (they're no longer dangerous areas now). I think we fulfilled our pledge three times over.

During our walks, I kept a soon-to-be-tattered copy of "A Field Guide to American Houses" (Penguin) to help me understand the differences between Adam and Georgian styles. I also got into the habit of photographing the interesting bits – the perfect examples, the outliers and the failures.

I didn't do this for any reason other than I loved the city and the houses. But as I became more of a furniture nerd (and eventually a professional maker) I began to feel the connections between architecture and furniture almost instinctively.

From the front, this chest is 3:5. From the ends, it is square.

Buildings, like casework, have a base (a pediment), a main structure (a carcase) and a frieze. And the more I looked at well-designed houses, the more I understood the rules for making chests and cabinets. A handful of things I picked up:

- Squares are ideal and pleasing shapes for the ends of buildings, chests and carcases.

- The rectangles that form the elevation of a chest or a building are usually a rectangle that is a whole-number ratio, such as 3:5.

- In a building, details at the base are diminished and details at the roof are exaggerated. This is because the base is closer to the viewer and the details at the roof are farther away. In furniture, that relationship is many times reversed because the base is farther away from our eyes than the frieze.

- The shapes of mouldings – convex or concave – can suggest different things. Convex mouldings can look like they are bulging under the weight of what's above. Concave mouldings look like they are branches of a tree supporting what's above. You can use this language to punctuate the look of a piece of furniture. Or you can misuse it and confuse the viewer.

So before you rush out to book a plane ticket to Charleston and spend 30 years wandering the streets, let me tell you about a shortcut I discovered. Here it is:

An unusual 19th century duplex on a side street in Covington, Ky. Note the near-perfect symmetry between the two units.

Covington, Ky., 2013

About a decade ago my wife and I decided to move to Covington, Ky., from our nearby leafy suburb and set up my workshop in an old urban storefront. The first step in our plan was to find the right building.

At first, I drove around the city to get a feel for the neighborhoods of this densely populated 19th-century river town. But driving, even slowly, was too fast to see anything. The houses were a smeared blur on the passenger window. I constantly missed small side streets and alleys because I was focused on not wrecking the car or smushing a city cat.

So I stopped the car, got out and started walking around, just like I did in Charleston with my dad. While walking, I found the Second Empire building that would become our workshop and home. And now that I live there in its upper floors, I venture out into the city in the early morning and evening to bookend my workday with lessons in symmetry, proportion and texture.

While Covington is 135 years younger than Charleston, it still has a lot to teach me. So I resolved to walk every street and alley of the town (and have almost fulfilled my pledge).

These locust trees do more work than the air conditioners and furnaces in the houses. Many old neighborhoods were designed with a particular tree in mind. Elms and London plane trees were ideal for streets with taller buildings. Locusts are ideal for smaller homes.

The lessons aren't just in proportion, they are in urban planning and forestry. While many modern designers of suburbs opt for laying out meandering, curvy park-like streets, you begin to appreciate the beauty of the strict grid of the 18th and 19th centuries. Every 20 feet there is a tree, and their interlocking network of branches over the street creates a dense canopy that shades houses and pedestrians during the summer. After the leaves drop off, the trees let the sun in to warm the houses in the winter.

The trees also absorb noise and pollution. And the canopy they build (especially the locust trees) create a Gothic lancet arch over the street, mimicking the cathedral on Covington's Madison Avenue. You will never see this from a car.

The original entrance and lights of this house are a wonder to modern eyes. These rarely survive, except in areas where the owners could not afford to upgrade.

Another important detail: I try to stray from the gentrified areas. While they are pleasant to look at, many times the improvements to the houses are stylistically wrong. In the poor areas, I find a far richer collection of things to see. The houses might be in worse shape overall, but their details have survived because the owners couldn't afford to install vinyl windows, replace the entryway doors or cover the Victorian details with modern siding.

So this is where my design education continues. Now that we live in a younger city, I am learning the language of Victorian, Arts & Crafts and Art Deco architects. It's definitely a different dialect compared to the Colonial architecture of Charleston. There's more symmetry, more texture and more technology – cast iron storefronts, welded sheet metal facades, intricate decorative brickwork and glazed pottery incorporated into the structures.

While the same proportioning systems lurk behind the period ornament it will be interesting to see what Covington does to my furniture designs.

These forgotten houses are on a forgotten street in Covington, Ky. Trying to imagine what they looked like when they were built is one of the exercises I use to learn how architecture works.

How to Learn From a City

After 30 years of deliberately absorbing cities as a designer, here are some tips if you want to give it a try.

Once I get to know a neighborhood, I can see what is right and wrong. I can see what is original and what has been removed or is improper. Understanding a neighborhood in this way is incredibly helpful when I design furniture. When I make an Arts & Crafts cabinet, I know in my heart what the corbels should look like (I've seen about 200 in Covington's Peaselburg neighborhood). If it's a bookcase with glass doors, I have a library of ways to divide up the glass with muntins – because of the windows I know in the city's Austinburg neighborhood. And I know that things such as stylized flowers are completely OK.

After dozens of walks around a city you might be rewarded with a gem like this – uncovered 100-year-old signs. The fonts and color and type size are all a lesson in early 20th-century styles.

All that knowledge comes from looking at Arts & Crafts bungalows and four-squares. A single bungalow might have 30 decorative details. A neighborhood of bungalows is enough to inform your work for a decade – if you will let it.

And a small city? That's enough education for a lifetime.

Christopher Schwarz is the editor atLost Art Press and one of the founders ofCrucible Tool. He works from a restored 1896 German barroom in Covington, Ky. You can see his furniture atchristophermschwarz.com.

Brought to you by MAKO Design + Invent, North America's leading design firm for taking your product idea from a sketch on a napkin to store shelves. Download Mako's Invention Guide for free here.

Navigating the world of crowdfunding can be overwhelming, to put it lightly. Which projects are worth backing? Where's the filter to weed out the hundreds of useless smart devices? To make the process less frustrating, we scour the various online crowdfunding platforms to put together a weekly roundup of our favorite campaigns for your viewing (and spending!) pleasure. Go ahead, free your disposable income:

The team behind Kickstarter's most successful furniture campaign is back with a new collection of transforming, space-saving furniture. A clever latch mechanism allows you to start with a console-sized piece and add panels to create a dining room table that can fit up to 12 people and withstand 750 pounds. Worried about how you'll store all those extra panels? An integrated storage box in the accompanying bench has you covered.

This modular wall storage system is designed to grow and change as quickly as your child does. A wide range of add-on accessories makes it suitable for tiny tots as well as teenagers.

Finding the right name for your business or product can be a daunting task. Go Name Yourself is an illustrated deck of cards that aims to guide you through that process and make sure you don't pick a boring one.

If you need a break from your smartphone, Mudita Pure will pretty much eradicate all major distractions. Featuring an E-Ink display, the minimalist phone has no Wi-Fi, no camera, and no email.

The elegant Pebble bottle makes the cold brew process a little bit easier and a lot more portable.

Do you need help designing, developing, patenting, manufacturing, and/or selling YOUR product idea? MAKO Design + Invent is a one-stop-shop specifically for inventors / startups / small businesses. Click HERE for a free confidential product consultation.

Product design irony: All smartphones look like simple glass rectangles, yet contain lots of on-screen complexity. "Dumb phones," on the other hand, are much more complicated on the outside, festooned as they are with physical buttons, but sharply limit the on-screen action.

Which is better for our mental health? While it's the smartphone that has society addicted, a handful of designers are betting that dumb phones can get people unhooked. We first saw this with the Jasper-Morrison-designed MP01 for Punkt, back in 2016:

Punkt MP01, 2016

Last year Japan's Kyocera did something similar, designing the stripped-down KY01-L:

Kyocera KY01-L, 2018

This year the trend--or perhaps potential cure, I should say--continues. A startup called Mudita has designed the Pure, a minimalist phone that uses an e-ink display and comes in black or white:

Mudita Pure, 2019

If you're wondering why the phone's timer is called a "meditiation timer:" Company founder Michal Kicinski, who ran a successful videogame company for 18 years and lived a high-stress lifestyle, had a life-changing experience when his business partner took him to India for a 10-day meditation retreat. "I said 'yes', not really knowing what it was," Kicinski writes. "During the flight I read that we're going for a 10 day long course of meditation, where you sleep in separate rooms, wake up at 4 AM and meditate for 10 hours.

"I thought it was crazy but decided to follow the instructions precisely. This is how a new chapter started for me. Those 10 days opened my eyes to a completely new way of thinking and living, I felt like someone had taken a really heavy bag from my back and was letting me start over. Nothing since this trip brought about as a big change in my life. Vipassana [meditation] helps you to get to know and understand yourself better, the reasons behind your choices and behaviours. It helps you find the tools you need to remove negativity from your life. Meditation from that moment on became an important part of my life."

Kicinski then changed his life drastically, reformatting his diet for better health and even launching a vegan restaurant. On the technology front, he launched Mudita. "One of the biggest problems of the modern world, that I saw, was that new technology became inhuman. It has two sides and sometimes we only start to notice the darker one after some time. In the beginning, we are fascinated by technology and the side effects or long-term consequences come much later. We're not always able to use it in an intentional way, so that technology supports us and doesn't become an addiction.

"Most companies profit from keeping the users in front of screens for as long as possible. Limiting our world to a five inch screen steals us from experiencing the world fully.

"We created Mudita in order to design products that would allow us to use new technologies without experiencing those negative effects for our physical and mental health."

The Mudita Pure already become a smash hit on Kickstarter; at press time it had reached $218,090 in funding, more than doubling its $100,000 goal, and there are still 16 days left to pledge.

Sentry is a speculative concept designed to tackle some of the key issues that support the spread of 'fake news', one of societies greatest growing challenges.

The aim was to design a physical product that sparks discussion about an intangible issue to raise awareness of potential ways forward.

Challenging unethical and exploitative strategies found in social media and digital news, Sentry provides critique on the state of journalism. Rising anxiety in what the public can trust has intensified polarisation in the political system and now trust in government and media is at an all-time low.

Sentry is designed to harness the disruptive power of the smartphone, stripping it of clickbait and addictive features, whilst focussing on creating a distraction-free micro-break.

Most of us had to go to college to get our Industrial Design education. There was simply nothing available at the high school level. But if we could get young people engaged with design earlier than we currently do, the profession would benefit as a whole.

What branch of design would appeal most to high school kids? Product, automotive, furniture? It actually doesn't matter, if those industries aren't bothering to reach out to youth. But PENSOLE Design Academy, the educational footwear design organization founded by D'Wayne Edwards, is reaching out, and betting that sneakers will be a good draw.

Last week PENSOLE launched "PENSOLE High School (PHS), a multidiscipline pre-college design program called Sneakerhead of State (S.O.S) for high school students."

"S.O.S has a double meaning—both standing for the program name, but also calling out the lack of design education for high school students nationwide. PENSOLE High School was created to inspire and raise awareness of design careers in the footwear industry," PENSOLE founder D'Wayne Edwards said. "Reaching high school youth is critical to empower students on their path toward becoming innovative problem-solvers while preparing them to create their own path for their future."

Through its Sneakerhead of State workshops, online and in-person competitions, PHS will reach a wide range of high school students interested in exploring design as a career option. All PHS programs are open to rising 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th-grade students.

"Showing young people how the products they love come to life, and how they can become involved in the design process is of the utmost importance to drive the future of our industry," said Jason Brown, VP of Marketing for Champs Sports.

Sneakerhead of State workshops will be held at Champs Sports stores in the hometowns of PENSOLE alumni, who will conduct the workshops with a goal of introducing participants and parents to the design process. Depending on the length of the workshop offered, participants will be given brief exercises covering a range (3-6) of studio disciplines offered at PENSOLE Academy, such as footwear design, color and material design, functional apparel and accessories design, brand design, shoemaking, and 3D design.

One student each will be crowned the Sneakerhead of State in Footwear Design, Color and Material Design, and Functional Apparel and Accessories Design in December. These students, along with the high school they attend, will receive cash prizes, gift cards from Champs Sports and a scholarship to attend PENSOLE, in Portland, Ore.

Registration is open now at https://pensole.com/pensole-high/high-school-workshops/ and the workshops' [remaining dates are] as follows:

Miami, FL: CHAMPS @AVENTURA MALL

October 12, 2019

Registration Closes: October 10, 2019

Portland, OR: CHAMPS @WASHINGTON SQ.

October 12, 2019

Registration Closes: October 10, 2019

California: CHAMPS @WESTFIELD CULVER CITY

October 19, 2019

Registration Closes: October 17, 2019

Louisville, KY: CHAMPS @ST. MATTHEWS

October 19, 2019

Registration Closes: October 17, 2019

With any luck this will become an annual fixture. More importantly, we hope that other design institutions will follow PENSOLE's lead and introduce the design bug earlier in peoples' lives.

Jen Lewin Studio creates large scale, interactive public artwork, exhibited worldwide. We are looking for a creative and committed individual to join our small Brooklyn team. In this role you will work directly with Jen Lewin and her small team to build several new large interactive sculptures being exhibited worldwide. You will help fabricate, assemble, and repair new or existing interactive artwork, and will travel as needed to help with exhibition installations and design support.

A favorite pastime is raiding Google's archive of previously-unseen Life Magazine photos. There's three pages of film on Raymond Loewy, who was apparently quite the partier (check out his crib, above and below).

This, friends, is the Father of Industrial Design's bathroom, circa 1949.

Below, Loewy laying in the cut: Behind the wheel of his Lincoln Continental concept car with a plexi roof.

The Loewy Crib in Palm Springs featured an indoor/outdoor pool studded with natural rock formations.

Ever wish you could change the color of your sneakers whenever you feel like it or update your phone case with a custom design instead of buying a new one? A future where inanimate objects can change colors like a chameleon may not be that far off. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has developed a "reprogrammable" ink that can change color when exposed to UV light. Called PhotoChromeleon, the innovation stands out from earlier color-changing experiments because it's fully reversible and can be repeated infinitely.

"This special type of dye could enable a whole myriad of customization options that could improve manufacturing efficiency and reduce overall waste," says Yuhua Jin, the lead author on a paper about the project. "Users could personalize their belongings and appearance on a daily basis, without the need to buy the same object multiple times in different colors and styles."

So how does it work? The ink is created by mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow photochromic dyes into a sprayable solution. Once the object has been sprayed, its placed in a box with a projector and UV light. Each color interacts with different wavelengths so exposing the ink to UV light allows you to activate or deactivate specific colors to achieve the desired result. See the process in action here:

So far the team has experimented with a toy car, a phone case, a shoe, and a toy chameleon. Depending on the object, the process takes anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes. They also experimented with mapping patterns onto the objects and achieved successful, high-resolution results.

MIT has been collaborating with the Ford Research and Innovation Center to develop the technology. "This ink could reduce the number of steps required for producing a multicolor part, or improve the durability of the color from weathering or UV degradation," said Alper Kiziltas, technical specialist of sustainable and emerging materials at Ford Motor Co. "One day, we might even be able to personalize our vehicles on a whim."